Setting up for success

The Materials have arrived!

It was a weekend of getting ready for a lot of progress and as well as work behind the scenes.  The Load of drywall (120 sheets to be exact) that should be enough to finish the project was delivered at 10 on Saturday morning.  Doug and I proceeded to spend the next two hours moving various sizes and varieties of sheetrock into storage and out of the snow.  Once it had found its temporary home we finished the peek of the great room and were able to remove the temporary planks over the stairs that everyone kept hitting their heads on.  But wait there's more, Amber showed up ready to work and progress continued.  With fiberglass raining down she was still a good enough sport to pass me up batting through the access holes into the attic of the original section of the house.  So now instead of ground up newspapers soaked in fire retardant and spun mineral wool the insulation is pretty legit now and at least an R38 rating.
Today went a bit slower though things still went forward.  I ended up being a little more worn out than I had expected so I wasn't a happy camper for the majority of the day.  Doug and I managed to get a new false ceiling in and the majority of the drywall hung.  Turns out though the end drywall needed to be trapezoids due to an out of square on the old ceiling.  Personally that did it for me and I quit working on it at that point.
So all in all it was a weekend that made great strides, but they were mostly prep strides so next weekend should be the flashy progress.

Working With New Sawhorses thats to Jim

The Peak over the stairs is done

Looks like a pretty great room indeed

"Fun" and done, enough said about attics and insulation

Finishing up a bedroom ceiling

Another perspective of that finish

Shameless self promotion

Cutting walls to shape

Expensive Mistakes, Progress, and Solutions

     To begin with I made the first expensive mistake that I will admit to.  Not having a lot of knowledge on how to measure windows and making the assumption that they were the same did two things.  I certainly made an ass out of me, and I have eight custom made windows that are six inches too long.  For a while I was considering cutting down the bricks, moving down the limestone blocks and rebuilding the frames.  Better sense won over after I finished being defensive to hide my mistake.  In the end I think that I will have to buy eight new windows (properly measured) and use the ones I have for the future greenhouse/sun room off the front.
     With that said it seemed to be another start to a terrible work weekend.  I was broke, I screwed up in a big way, and its cold out.  The trifecta of assurances backing a good work weekend.  As it turns out the odds were beaten.  Amber pulled through buying the needed lumber for the window frames (which isn't surprising since the list of people she hasn't come through for is in the negative).   Then Doug showed up on Saturday morning with a will to work and we put in all new replacement windows downstairs.  The best part of it is we ended up swearing less than usual at one another.  Once the windows were in I moved on to drywall and insulation.  So it was a good working weekend.   At the end of the day Doug bailed me out again.  I  couldn't have gotten all the windows in on my own, and today we had seven inches of blowing snow.  Father and son crew does it again!  

What the new windows that are properly sized look like installed

Getting into the house

The front room looks like a room again

A better example of the last photo



Aspiring to be window frames



Still working on the SOB ceiling

Brighter than your average 1870's window

Ladder games

Putting in the ceiling

I mean its been a while since the ladder platform ladder system so I decided to give OSHA another run for their money

All in all a successful weekend

Fiberglass and fun

The past few days of working has been much more reasonable than the past month since the weather seems to have broken a bit or at least its upper thirties and fourties instead of close to zero.  Menards as it turns out convienently had a sale with rebates on high R value insulation as well and unfinished oak interior prehung doors and drywall.  Pretty much a taylored made sale for where we have progressed to.  We ended up with twenty or so sheets of 5/8" drywall for the ceiling of the great room.  The thickness had to be sized up since the trusses are spaced at two feet instead of 16".  What supprised me the most was how much of a difference an eight of an inch makes for the overall weight of the sheets.  The 4x10's come in at about 88 lbs appice.  This being said its not specifically a lot of weight, it is the geometry of the weight and holding peices in place that takes its toll as a day wears on.
The fiberglass went up fairly easy with only a few areas that needed specially cut pieces.  The truly wonderful thing about the r-38 is it seems to be slightly "crispier" than the other fiberglasses going into the house.  So not only does it shed a lot of fibers they have the ability to float just long enough to get down the back of anything being worn and plaster themselves to the general face/eye region.  90% of it is up though and I don't forsee having to install kraft faced batting over my head for a long time.

Installing R-38 Batting



Even better than down the back is when it rains in the ol eyes



Attic vents to to soffit plates

Continuing the R-38

Doug and I putting up the first sheet of ceiling drywall

The Suburban Deer Herd checking out the Project

Putting up the second sheet of ceiling drywall

After sheet four went up it seemed like a good spot to quit

Lynch hanging some hallway walls

Scraps